DITEDI - Cluster delle Tecnologie Digitali

Direttore | Cluster Manager

Project Manager

Camera dei Deputati

Attività di ricerca su temi dell'innovazione ed infrastrutture digitali. Collaborazione stesura documenti, gestione risorse, attività politica.

Assistente Parlamentare

SWG s.r.l.

Interviste telefoniche e registrazione dati

Impiegato ricerca statistica e sociale

Francesco Contin

Increasing Product Manager impact through Strategy, Continuous Discovery, & OKRs

I am a Certified Strategy Professional, ICAgile Certified Lean Portfolio Manager and Certified Professional in Business Agility Foundations (BAF), Certified OKR Coach, Senior Agile Leader, Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), as well as a Certified Scrum Master (CSM), with over 15 years of experience in coaching, innovating, executing, and delivering end-to-end digital and mobile solutions for Fortune 200 clients in the banking and financial services industry. 

I'm currently Principal Design Enablement Manager, Design Excellence & Operations (DeXOps) – KeyXD Team at KeyBank, where we centralize and support KeyBank's world-class design function. 

My core competencies include Strategy, Product Management, Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), Continuous Discovery, solution development and delivery, Agile leadership, solution innovation, PMO leadership, SDLC management, information architecture, iOS and Android application development, delivery management, program and project management, budget and resource management, user experience enhancement, client engagement leadership, client relationship management, and technology team leadership. 

I am passionate about building great products that leverage Lean and UX-driven, Design Thinking-centered approaches to deliver measurable client-focused business outcomes. I am also an author and public speaker, sharing my insights and best practices on Product, Strategy, OKRs, and Agile delivery.

All views expressed are my own.

Michael Goitein

RICE scored your feature at 1,200. You shipped it. Four months later: 3% adoption.
You ran the numbers:
Reach: 1,000 users per quarter
Impact: 3 (massive)
Confidence: 80%
Effort: 2 person-weeks

RICE Score: (1,000 × 3 × 0.8) / 2 = 1,200
Highest on the list. You built it. Celebrated the launch.
Then crickets. Zero retention impact. Wasted Product, UX, and Engineering time, effort & capacity.

What happened?
You wasted time prioritizing features in the solution space. 

What to do instead? 
Focus on how customer opportunities in the problem space connect to overarching strategy.

RICE can never answer:
 - Which customers are we choosing to serve?
 - What distinctive value are we delivering?
 - How does this connect to winning?

RICE gives you the illusion of scientific rigor and objectivity while you build and ship random things that are, at best, random and duplicative, and at worst, actively cancel each other out. 

Because prioritization frameworks are bandaids trying to fix the problems created when leadership either can’t, or won’t, make clear strategic choices.

See the image. Great product teams don't score features. They make strategic choices at the team and product level about which customer opportunities to pursue that deliver against overarching strategy.

Stop ignoring the problem. Start closing The Strategy Gap.

Enterprise Product, Strategy & Continuous Discovery

Y Combinator partners ripped first-time founders Alexander Danilowicz & Teddy Ni for having "the silliest startup idea they'd ever heard."

Two years later, Magic Patterns hit $1M Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) with two founders and zero employees.

And they did it by doing something most AI startups refuse to do:
𝗥𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 & 𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀. 𝗟𝗼𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺.

That decision explains why they're now generating $500K in ARR per employee, while competitors burn through venture capital in a vain attempt to serve larger Total Addressable Markets (“TAMs”).

Magic Patterns users are obsessed with its ability not only to speed up design, but for something that sounds impossible until you see it happen.

In this week's Product Strategy Decoded, I break down the strategic choices two frontend engineers made to build what VCs now value at over $6M:
→ The critical capability most AI design tools completely miss 
→ Why saying no to a larger user base created a compounding competitive advantage 
→ The metrics they track to nurture free users into 50-seat enterprise accounts

Read the full story & subscribe here:

Open article: How Magic Patterns Hit $1M ARR By Turning Away Most Of Their Potential Customers by michaelgoitein.substack.com

How Magic Patterns Hit $1M ARR By Turning Away Most Of Their Potential Customers

The $200M Product Strategy Lovable Uses To Become The Last Piece of Software You’ll Ever Need

Lovable.dev’s Co-Founder & CEO Anton Osika Reverse-engineering the choices powering Europe’s most successful startup ever in its quest to remove the final barrier to startup success Saving lives and generating $500,000 in funding—without writing a single line of code. Brazilian growth marketer Sabrine Matos was devastated by the tragic story of a woman murdered by her partner, a man with a violent criminal record she never knew about....

Open article: The $200M Product Strategy Lovable Uses To Become The Last Piece of Software You’ll Ever Need by michaelgoitein.com

The $200M Product Strategy Lovable Uses To Become The Last Piece of Software You’ll Ever Need

Your Q1 2026 roadmap shows WHAT you're building and WHEN. Missing: WHY those features instead of others.

Like most product teams, you're confusing planning with strategy.

Planning = organizing activities you control: When to build. Who builds it. How long it takes. How much it costs. When you ship.
Strategy = influencing what you don't control: Customer behavior.

 – Planning is inward-facing and analytical. Managing capacity, budgets, 
estimating effort, creating execution schedules, i.e., roadmaps.
 – Strategy is client-centric and creative. Imagining different futures where your clients and you both win.

You can't analyze and plan your way to getting customers to choose you.

You can only understand their unmet needs, then discover, design, and deliver something they value enough to choose you.

Strategy happens when you stop building random one-off features and start building things that work together to change customer behavior.

What's in your roadmap that's positively influencing the right customers' behaviors?

Gamma’s Genius Strategic Shift
Too many companies adopting AI tend to think in terms of binary, either/or options.

Either build expensive proprietary AI stacks, or connect to existing LLMs to bolt superficial AI functionality onto existing products.

Gamma discovered a third path. They built a genuine competitive moat by developing a sophisticated AI orchestration capability that no one thought could be a differentiator.

Gamma is proving you don’t have to be first-to-market or best-funded to succeed. 

You just need to make smarter strategic choices around AI integration while mastering the product-led growth basics of viral loops and community development.

Can competitors copy your best features? Yup. Who cares? Let them.

But can they replicate your entire ecosystem's interconnected success? Much harder.

Building an ecosystem requires fundamental business model and process changes most companies simply can't or won't make.

It's like trying to rebuild Amazon's delivery network in your garage. Theoretically possible, practically impossible.

While you're busy A/B testing features to optimize tiny gains, your smartest competitors are thinking differently, building enabling structures and processes, and striking key partnerships.

Which approach are you taking?

As an author and creator, I've learned the hard way how incredibly time-consuming Infographics can be to create.

When done well, they show complex concepts at a glance.

When done poorly, they overwhelm or confuse, rather than add value. 

In my latest article on Magic Patterns revolutionary AI-driven design approach, I needed to quickly sketch out the concept of "shift-left" for product teams.

This is a tale of three images.
1. 𝗜𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟭: 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗴𝗹𝗲'𝘀 𝗟𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗡𝗮𝗻𝗼 𝗕𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗮 𝗣𝗿𝗼: Nails it out of the gate, but oddly throws in "cite" everywhere, and inexplicably places it against an 1849 gold rush-era map background
2. 𝗜𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟮: 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗲 "𝗙𝗶𝘅𝗲𝘀" 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗢𝘂𝘁𝗽𝘂𝘁: Anthropic's Claude is great at so many things, especially editorial feedback. But this is so comical it's embarrassing.
3. 𝗜𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝟯: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗩𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: Bringing the first version into Affinity Photo, cleaning up the "cite" references, and adding the correct Magic Patterns logo.

This is the final version that appears in the article, linked in the comments below.

Google's Nano Banana first pass on the article infographic

The final version, taking the Nano Banana version and cleaning it up in Affinity Photo

AI is making us mentally "obese," and nobody's talking about it. The closest parallel? Walking.

In some parts of America, you literally can't do anything without getting in a car. No walking. No biking. Just cars to go anywhere and do literally everything.

And it's turned America into a hotbed of obesity, triggering a nationwide health crisis.

And the same thing is happening in slow-motion with AI right now.

When we outsource every mental task to AI, from writing a simple email to brainstorming and creative thinking, we're creating mental "suburbs" where our brain cells start to shrivel and die from lack of use.

The solution isn't avoiding AI. It's being strategic and finding balance.

Figure out the places to use AI to "drive" to destinations that would waste your time. 

But make sure you're still taking regular mental "walks" and solving problems yourself.

Our brains, like our bodies, need regular exercise to stay strong.

What's one mental task you've committed to doing without AI assistance? 

Comment below.

Your out-of-control backlog proves your leadership isn’t strategic.
You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem.

247 backlog items. Sales wants enterprise SSO. Customer success wants onboarding. Marketing wants viral sharing. Engineering wants to rebuild everything.

You're scoring, ranking, and planning by quarter.

You're asking the wrong question.
Not "which should we build first?"

"Which customers are we choosing to serve? in which unique & differentiated ways?"

Because strategy requires choosing:
 – These customers over those
 – This value proposition over that
 – These capabilities over those

Your leadership refuses to choose. They want it all– to serve everyone, solve everything, and compete everywhere.

The result? A 247-item confession nobody knows who you're trying to serve, or how to win with them.

Stop trying to serve customers who will never care about your product.

Strategy simply starts by serving one customer segment in one channel with one value proposition.

Go.

Atlassian’s $975 million acquisition of Loom happened not because of Loom’s original, official strategy. 

It happened because of the revealed strategy, overwhelmingly driven by user behavior.

Loom originally started as a set of connected developer tools. 

You could share chunks of code, do pull request reviews, really integrate collaboration for engineering teams. Video was one small part of it.

But what Atlassian ended up acquiring them for was solving the problem of meetings.

What Loom became, and what Atlassian acquired, was async video messaging updates. 

Now woven into the fabric of every Atlassian product, whether Jira, Confluence, or anything else, you can find a little video icon, record a short clip, and that gives context. You don’t have to be great at writing. You record a short Loom clip that travels with that work unit, giving people context without you having to be there.

That’s been hugely successful for Atlassian in its drive to build a suite of “connected workplace” tools. 

Listen to Chris Tottman and I discuss this and many other pivot stories in this week's "Product Strategy Decoded" conversation.

There's always a hidden strategy controlling your organization– whether you like it or not.
Whatever bold transformation move you want to make, hidden gravity will pull everything back into the same old patterns.
It's the hidden habits of daily company life.
One way out?
Reverse-engineer your current strategic choices using the Strategy Choice Cascade.

Your company doesn't lack a strategy. You just aren’t clear about what it is.

Leadership says, "We can’t have a strategy. Things are moving too fast."

Wrong.

Every choice your company makes IS strategy.:
 – Which customers you serve (pricing, features, support model)
 – Which problems you solve (product roadmap priorities)
 – How you position (marketing, sales, product design)

You always have a strategy. It's just hidden.

Reverse-engineering reveals it:
Look at your product's actual choices: 
 – What features exist? Who do they serve? 
 – What's intentionally missing? Who are you not serving? 
 – What does pricing signal about your target customers? 
 – What tradeoffs have you made in design and architecture? What are you optimizing for?

These choices reveal your Where to Play and How to Win.

Most teams don’t know what to do because they've never taken the time to reverse-engineer their strategy. So they push to build and release faster, much of which directly contradicts their “hidden strategy.”

Strategy isn't what leadership says in all-hands meetings; it’s hidden inside what you’re already doing.

How much more could your teams achieve if you made those choices clear and consistent?

SWOTs are totally worthless anyway, so you may as well let 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗮 do the heavy lifting instead of paying $$$

RIP Mckinsey.

Use these prompts to replace $500/hr consultants:

1. Go to gamma .app
2. Click on "Create with AI".
3. Paste the prompt you need:

✦ SWOT Analysis
Create a 10–12 slide deck titled ‘SWOT for [BUSINESS/PROJECT]’. Include: brief overview, goals, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats, top 5 priorities, 30-day action list.

✦ Competitor Comparison
Make a 10–12 slide deck ‘Competitor Snapshot: [INDUSTRY/REGION]’. Include: who the competitors are, price/features table, pros/cons, where we’re better/worse, and 3 moves to win in 90 days.

✦ Customer Persona
Build an 8–10 slide deck ‘Who We Serve’. Include: 2–3 personas with photo/quote, pains, goals, buying triggers, channels they use, and what message works for each.

✦ Value Proposition & Message House
Create a 8–10 slide deck ‘Why Choose [PRODUCT/BRAND]’. Include: problem in one line, promise in one line, 3 proof points, before/after example, short tagline options, and website hero copy.

✦ Go-to-Market Launch Plan
Produce a 12–14 slide deck ‘Launch Plan for [PRODUCT]’. Include: target customer, simple message, channels (email/social/partners), 4-week content calendar, small budget split, and launch checklist.

✦ Pricing Options
Create a 8–10 slide deck ‘Pricing for [PRODUCT/SERVICE]’. Include: good/better/best packages, what’s included, who each package is for, simple discount rules, and a clear recommendation.

✦ KPI Scorecard
Make a 8–10 slide deck ‘Scorecard for [TEAM/BUSINESS]’. Include: 6–8 must-have metrics, what each metric means, target vs current, how often to check, and who owns each metric.

✦ 30-60-90 Day Plan
Build a 10–12 slide deck ‘First 90 Days for [ROLE/PROJECT]’. Include: goals, quick wins, weekly rhythm, stakeholders, risks, and checklists for day 30, 60, and 90.

✦ Budget & Break-Even
Create a 8–10 slide deck ‘Simple Budget for [PROJECT/STORE/APP]’. Include: costs list, expected sales, break-even point, best/base/worst case, and money-saving ideas.

✦ Risks & Mitigations
Produce a 8–10 slide deck ‘What Could Go Wrong (and Plan B)’. Include: top risks in plain words, how likely/impactful each is (red/yellow/green), owner, and the backup plan.

In whatever you "create," what’s the “story” behind the value the person on the other side gets from it?

What benefits will your ideal customers receive from you?

How will your offer take them from darkness and despair, to light & future promise?

What’s their “hero’s journey?”

In other words, you may not need to invest in another guru, course, or certification.

Invest your time refining the "story" that helps the right people understand the transformational value you, your products, and services provide.

That’s something AI won’t easily copy anytime soon.

Want to finish December with a new level of AI skills?
Come join Elena Calvillo's "AI Advent Calendar Challenge," a fun daily series of AI prompts to up-level your game with a stellar lineup of AI thought leaders.
Join us!
https://lnkd.in/eRBH-SxR

AI Product Manager | Building AI Products at WTW | Newsletter Writer Helping 1,000+ PMs Navigate AI at productreleasenotes.com

🎄 Big announcement 🎄

AI Advent Challenge is LIVE! 

300+ people already signed up.
25 days of practical AI skills.
30+ incredible contributors.

Thank you to everyone who made this possible: 
Sam Illingworth Wyndo Mitra Buwana Mike Watson Raghav Mehra Maria-Cristina Muntean Mike X Cohen, PhD Jose Antonio Morales Michael Goitein Sharyph M Nicola de Vera Dennis Berry Dinah Davis James Presbitero Cristina Oliva Patrick Camilo I. Zambrano Juan Salas-Romer Katie Barnes 🤫 Dominik Gmeiner Toni Dos Santos Karo Zieminski Benedikt Kantus Joel Salinas Frencia Anfernee Tan Dheeraj Sharma Shamim Rajani

And thanks the tools that made this possible too Lovable Supabase Cursor Resend

One door unlocks every day at midnight starting Dec 1.

Join us: https://lnkd.in/eaiK_pzp

Don't forget to support us on Product Hunt: https://lnkd.in/eMMRSEde

Who's learning AI this December? 🙋

Open article: AI Advent Calendar: Learn AI in 24 days with 3-min daily lessons | Product Hunt by producthunt.com

AI Advent Calendar: Learn AI in 24 days with 3-min daily lessons | Product Hunt

Adobe just paid a hefty price premium to acquire Semrush and integrate “Generative Engine Optimization” (“GEO”) into its products.
But the odds are against it ever seeing a dime of return on that investment.
Read the full story in this week's "Product Strategy Decoded" & subscribe here:
https://lnkd.in/e33Pnv5q

Google, Anthropic, Microsoft, and Cursor all made big moves as we wind down 2025 

See the strategic choices underlying these moves as they position for competitive advantage into the next year, and the agentic AI feature that’s already here.

Open article: This Week In The Autonomous Agent Race by michaelgoitein.substack.com

When should a startup pivot? To what, exactly?
Yesterday, I had the good fortune to speak with Notion Capital VC Chris Tottman
He laid out a set of brilliant, hard-won lessons gained over his successful career.

Listen and learn how to:
• Find problems worth solving
• Discover what's working vs. trying to prove your original idea was right
• Define the right market segment
• Reveal the strategy really driving your product's success

Read the full story & subscribe here:
https://lnkd.in/eVgNPfHN

Open video: The Art and Science of Pivots – Livestream with VC Chris Tottman on michaelgoitein.substack.com

The Art and Science of Pivots – Livestream with VC Chris Tottman

Is modern business addicted to data in the wrong ways? Roger L. Martin believes the excessive reliance on analytics in business stifles innovation by overlooking creativity and empathy. In this piece, I use examples of the iPhone and Aeron chair that succeeded despite poor data predictions, and lay out how Roger advocates for a focus on imagination solutions and community engagement over data.

Open article: Why The World’s Leading Strategist Says Data Is Killing Your Product’s Future by michaelgoitein.com

Why The World’s Leading Strategist Says Data Is Killing Your Product’s Future

Kudos to the Lovable team for building and continuously improving the vibe-coding platform of choice.
I do a deep-dive breakdown through the lens of the "Playing to Win" strategy framework, with important updates on Lovable's latest strategic moves, including the blockbuster partnership with Atlassian, turning Jira tickets and Confluence pages into working software on the fly.

Open article: The $200M Product Strategy Lovable Uses To Become The Last Piece of Software You’ll Ever Need by medium.com

The $200M Product Strategy Lovable Uses To Become The Last Piece of Software You’ll Ever Need

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The Battle

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Michael Goitein

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